Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been hospitalized and is undergoing heart tests.

President Barack Obama's approval rating currently stands at 55 percent, a high for his second term.

"A tip from a prison guard has yielded the single largest federal case in Maryland's history: 80 people including corrections officers, inmates and "outside facilitators" have been charged with orchestrating a vast contraband smuggling enterprise that traded drugs, tobacco and cellphones to prisoners for money and sex."

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On the plus side we aren’t suppose to do elective cases after noon, so it’s going to be a 1/2 day. On the minus side, I have three oak trees in my front yard that might be a concern considering wind speeds.

JWatts is correct. If they were planted in the last 50 years, and they are big, it is a laurel oak (a.k.a., swamp oak). The live oaks that look very similar take decades longer to get to their full size.

We also have a laurel oak in our front yard. Had a tree guy tell us that it is on its way out (60 years old, and has been struck by lightning several times). Luckily it is on county property, so they will remove it for us…

Sometimes God sends cops, alligators, and hurricanes to give us enough context to see how good the good times are. Sure your girlfriend has gotten to that age where meth doesn’t keep her skinny, and the mountain dew and meth have ruined her grill, but she’ll still get blaze drunk and flash her much bigger, if slightly less firm, tits. But you can still drive less than an hour to a beach where there are young goddesses cavorting in very little. And winter never comes, so you never have to worry about freezing to death if you’re not currently employed.

Motor Trend is sad to report the passing of our colleague Brock Yates, former Car and Driver editor and founder of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash and One Lap of America events. His son, Brock Yates Jr., broke the news of his passing on Facebook.

“Today, after suffering with Alzheimer’s for the last 12 years, my father finally succumbed,” Yates Jr. wrote in the post. “He touched many lives, but sadly no more.”

Born on October 21, 1933, Yates began his career as an automotive journalist in the 1960s, and eventually went on to helm our longtime competitor in 1966. In the 1970s, Yates, with help from another editor, came up with the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash (or Cannonball Run, for short). The event was an unsanctioned cross-country race devised in protest to the imminent 55-mph national speed limit. The race was held until 1979, and resulted in many cross-country records. Yates wrote a screenplay based on the races that eventually became 1981’s classic “The Cannonball Run.”

“Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria,” King tweeted on Monday, “most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh.”

King was, for the most part, correct. The vast majority of people employed as clowns are content to brighten days, pie faces and fashion balloons into poodles. (Exceptions to the rule include “Wrinkles,” the Florida clown who will traumatize children for a fee.) Those good clowns are a shrinking population, and reclaiming the clown mantle will take more than goodwill tweets. In school districts and police stations, clown sightings have become a source of discomfort rather than giggles.

At the moment, the dominant clown strain in the United States ? the one appearing in police and media reports, and what compelled King to defend America’s hard-working jester ? is something altogether more sinister.

At the moment, the dominant clown strain in the United States ? the one appearing in police and media reports, and what compelled King to defend America’s hard-working jester ? is something altogether more sinister.

Man, when this first started like 3 years ago I made jokes about the only sensible Clown Policy being a shoot on sight, but now people are advocating that sincerely and it just takes the fun out of it.

I believe it’s for the same reason that Clinton had a “surplus” even though the debt continued to go up every year of his presidency–because the balance on the annual deficit is offset by Social Security receipts on that part of the balance ledger, but not on the public debt side.

…80 people including corrections officers, inmates and “outside facilitators” have been charged with orchestrating a vast contraband smuggling enterprise that traded drugs, tobacco and cellphones to prisoners for money and sex.

Unregulated economies are unacceptable. The prison has a commissary system set up for these kinds of things.

I know this happened like a 100 yrs. ago and Benghazi was right wing conspiracy/witch hunt, but maybe just maybe…

An arms dealer who had threatened to reveal potentially damaging information about Hillary Clinton’s alleged role in arming Islamist militants until federal prosecutors abruptly dropped their case against him Tuesday, told Fox News the case has cost him everything.

Federal prosecutors faced a Wednesday deadline to turn over discovery documents to the legal team of American Marc Turi, who had been charged with selling weapons to Libyan rebels. Late Tuesday, an announcement came that the government was dropping the case, which was set to go to trial on Nov. 8 ? the day American voters choose between Clinton and GOP nominee Donald Trump. The move may avert a release of potentially explosive documents.

“I am glad this horrific five-year ordeal is over and I am pleased to be able to move on with my life,” Turi told Fox News in a statement. “The American public has the right to know that an injustice was committed against an innocent American.”

Turi said his legal team advised him to accept the deal and avoid a trial, but insisted that his actions were in furtherance of his ongoing support of U.S. foreign policy. He said defending himself in a case that has now been dropped has cost him everything.

Two things, if he actually had some dirt why would they wait so long to acquit him? and secondly wow.

Yes, Bigfoot appeared for photo ops, to the delight of many who posed with him. There were serious discussions by Sasquatch experts, a music festival, three bouncy-houses for children, crafts, archery, and food from Indian tacos to muscadine grape jelly. Free flu shots were given by the Choctaw Nation.

Tom Hefner, head of the Bigfoot Scholarship fund, said the festival raises money for graduating high school seniors at Clayton, Talihina and Smithville. They gave over $9,000 to May, 2016, graduates.

Bigfoot art contest winners were Averi Rodriguez for 2 to 10 years; Kooper Gooding for 11 to 15 years, and Rebecca Webb for 16 and up.

A group from the Talihina Veterans’ Center visited the festival on Friday, listening to music in the Steel Tent, where they were recognized for their service. The Clayton High School Band played “America the Beautiful,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and other favorites.

One popular t-shirt sold by Jolly Winsor, president of the Honobia group, read: “Honobia 2016 –Bigfoot for President!!”

No kidding. We have, what hundreds if not thousands of skeletons of extinct N American mammals, but the lack of a single shred of evidence for bigfoot doesn’t dissuade these morons. Had a similar experience with a coworker who was a literal ghost hunter. Zero actual ghosts found, but that didn’t stop her from believing!

Factions of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are threatening to attack US troops that participate in the battle to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State (IS), but the Iraqi government hopes to smooth things over.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said his government will work on a consensus formula to convince PMU factions of the need to involve US troops in the battle to resolve the problem as soon as possible. He also hopes to persuade Washington that the PMU is a national force of the Iraqi state and should be part of a special military system to liberate Mosul.

It seems there is a strong possibility an understanding can be reached ? if the PMU is assured the United States does not intend to build a military base in Ninevah province. Mosul is the capital of Ninevah.

However, many are not convinced. Hassan al-Kaabi, a member of the PMU backing up the Iraqi government forces, rejects the presence of US troops in the battle for Mosul and believes they are not keen to help Iraqis fight terrorism.

“I will fight them wherever they are,” he told Al-Monitor. “They are an occupation force that pretends to be assisting us.”

And another question is once mosul is cleared, will the PMU continue on to help their syrian brothers. If 10,000+ PMU head into syria.. it will make things very tough for Saudi, turkey, us and very helpful for assad

Not so sure about that. Ended up watching all the local news feeds when Hermine hit north of here – they had field reporters out standing in waist deep water (that turns out was often contaminated by half treated waste) for hours on end, reporting over and over that yes, it was still raining, and yes, it was still windy.

I think I’d re-think my career choice if my boss came to me with instructions to stand in waist deep waste water during a lightning-filled hurricane…

Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, are some of the strongest contenders to explain dark matter. WIMPs are heavy particles ? about 10 to 100 times heavier than a proton ? that were produced during the Big Bang, though just small quantities are left today. These particles interact with normal matter via gravity or the weak nuclear force. More massive WIMPs would move more slowly through space, and therefore be “cold” dark-matter candidates, while lighter ones would move faster, and be “warm” dark matter. [Wacky Physics:

One way to find them is in “direct detection” experiments, such as the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment, which is a container of liquid xenon in a South Dakota mine. If a xenon nucleus seems to “bounce” with no explanation, that would be a candidate for getting hit with a dark-matter particle. The magnitude of the bounce would give an idea of the new particle’s mass. But Hooper said that LUX hasn’t seen anything yet.

Another way to see the WIMPs might be particle accelerators. Inside accelerators, atomic nuclei smash into each at near the speed of light, and in the process that energy of the collision gets turned into other particles, some new to science. So far, though, particle accelerators haven’t detected anything that looks like a dark matter candidate, either.

I watched an interesting talk about the relative merits of dark matter and modified gravity theories. The person giving the talk (can’t remember who, maybe Leonard Susskind) concluded that dark matter seemed more likely. But it’s good not to put all the eggs in the dark matter basket, I think.

Both have their downsides. I like MOND because it doesn’t require us to generate 70% of the mass of the universe in non-interacting particles because “it must be there because the theory explains the visible region so well.”, but it does require us to have a discontinuity in the theory of gravity where it transitions from an inverse square law to an inverse. I prefer to believe that the universe and the observable universe are nearer to unity than the Einstein-Newton gravity equations require it to be.

I like what Richard Feynman said to people who didn’t like the weirdness of quantum physics. If you don’t like it, too bad (unless you can come up with another theory that describes things as well). Of course, QED is a much more thoroughly tested theory than dark matter. The universe doesn’t owe us aesthetically or philosophically pleasing laws of physics.

Mr Musk spoke earlier this year about the fact that he believes that the chance that we are not living in a computer simulation is “one in billions”. He said that he had come to that conclusion after a chat in a hot tub

I would actually be pleasantly surprised if there wasn’t some gov. agency/taskforce tasked with this as its mission, because some fucktard in congress thought the Matrix was a documentary or wanted to get his son a job so he would finally leave the tinfoiled lined walls of his basement.

It goes something like “Eventually society will develop a computer that can completely simulate the entire universe and will use it. Therefore, their simulated universe will also develop a simulated universe, which will make another, and another. Therefore, there’s a greater chance that we are one of the infinitely recursive simulated universe than there is that we are the original real universe.”

Except the entire argument is predicated on the idea that making a computer that can simulate the entire universe is POSSIBLE.

It’s clearly NOT POSSIBLE, as the data necessary to store every detail about the whole universe would NECESSARILY require a computer big enough to store all that data, which would be bigger in size then all the matter in the real universe.

So yeah, Musk is just parroting pseudo-intellectual nonsense that people use to try to sound smart or deep. Which is pretty much as he always does.

I usually put interesting-sounding new games on a waitlist that pings me when they’re on sale below a certain price. I threw No Man’s Sky on for fifteen bucks or something when it was on Colbert, and every week or so since release I’ve been sheepishly going back to the site and adjusting my cutoff price down a few more dollars after reading the latest shitstorm going on with it. My cheapness seems to have spared me a lot of disappointment in this case.

But seriously, if this is all a simulation, then most of us are probably NPCs, not people trapped in a jar. “Breaking out” might not be possible, and if it was, it would be more like a “AI escapes into the real world and starts causing havoc” sci-fi nightmare scenario. To say nothing of the fact that in a society advanced enough to create such a simulation, we’d basically be cavemen.

Like a month ago he claimed that Clinton was going to win “unless something happened to change that”, but went on to say it was “almost certain” one of the things he thought would change it would happen. He’s now gone back to complete endorsement of a “landslide” because a few of the things he said would change Clinton’s apparent victory have all happened.

I would be reading with fascination if he had stuck to his guns. He’s a good writer.

I’m kinda hate-reading him now instead. He does way too much hedging and it’s completely ludicrous that he spent so much time building up Trump as the One True Persuader and then suddenly went “oh, Clinton’s got a One True Persuader too!” when she tried the shockingly novel strategy of “calling him scary.”

Yogic philosophy also holds values such as ahimsa, or nonviolence, and kharma, or selfless action, at its core. Yoga, like feminism, seeks to dismantle and deconstruct cultural notions and belief systems through critical thinking, or kind questioning.

It values non-duality and fluidity of the self and in our expression of gender. The idea of “wiping the fog from the mirror” is a common one in yoga ? that we can wipe away that which clouds our clarity, that we can be increasingly conscious and awake to what is happening around us.

Yoga, then, can teach us not only to let go of harmful and rigid constructions of self as we heal from trauma, but fills that space with a framework grounded in liberation and taking action.

Karma’s not even close to being “selfless action”, it’s a supposed metaphysical mechanism of the universe whereby good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished, either in this life or the next. In some ways, you could argue there even is no such thing as “selfless action” with karma because the entirety of the concept is that no good deed goes unrewarded, so you’ll get something in return for any charitable thing you do, therefore it cannot be called “selfless”.

While you’re kicking sand in their face, you might remind them that the yoga that Americans practice today is all descended from a late-19th century gymnastics/calisthenic routine to strengthen Hindi MEN.

Yoga, like feminism, seeks to dismantle and deconstruct cultural notions and belief systems through critical thinking, or kind questioning.

Since feminism, as it is defined by society today, has no connection to critical thinking of kind questioning. And while feminist goals likely include dismantling/deconstructing current norms and beliefs, this has never happened and never can since they start with faulty fundamental principles.

They’ve slightly succeeded in getting many others to agree to their faulty worldview, but it’s not really changing society at large because it doesn’t match reality.

It’s almost equivalent to thinking we can fix racsim by giving white supremacists glasses which shows all humans, regardless of actual race, to be Caucasian. So sure, feminists have gotten people to agree to use the feminist’s incorrect filtered view of the world, but as this has no impact on the world itself, the impact is minimal and temporary…..but I digress.

Main point is only if Yoga is using similar logic or critical thinking as compared to feminists, it doesn’t say much about Yoga. My guess is if Yoga were an entity dedicated to teaching yoga for health/stress benefits, they would probably prefer to not be associated with feminists our any other political group.

And if Yoga has to coincide with feminism or other political worldviews, it seems weak/not strong enough to stand on its own.

In any event, all it really shows that yoga and feminism are conflated, is the continuing societal march towards politicizing everything.

On matters of war and peace, Obama has proven to be a confounding and contradictory figure, one who stands to leave behind both devastating and pressing failures, as well as a set of fresh accomplishments whose impact could resonate for decades.

He is the erstwhile anti-war candidate, now engaged in more theaters of war than his predecessor. He is the commander-in-chief who pulled more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops out of harm’s way in Iraq, but also began a slow trickle back in. He recoiled against full-scale, conventional war, while embracing the brave new world of drone attacks. He has championed diplomacy on climate change, nuclear proliferation and has torn down walls to Cuba and Myanmar, but failed repeatedly to broker a lasting pause to more than six years of slaughter in Syria.

If there was consensus Obama had not yet earned his Nobel Peace Prize when he received it in 2009, there’s little such agreement on whether he deserves it today.

as well as a set of fresh accomplishments whose impact could resonate for decades

Such as…. Obamacare? His son Trayvon? Toppling of anti-Islamist leaders? The migrant crisis threatening to swallow Europe? Economic stagnation? Hyperegulation? I’d love it if anyone could sincerely name one fucking accomplishment of his.

The only positive thing I can come up with is that Osama Bin Laden died while Obama was in office. That’s it. Everything else that Obama has been involved with, either directly or indirectly, has either been an absolute failure or disappointing at best.

Obama didn’t do shit. If an undercooked turkey were occupying the Oval Office at the time, the spy agencies and military personnel would still have found and killed the guy. It’s not like Obama was exactly leading the investigation.

Obama has 386 accomplishments, if you are generous in what you count as an accomplishment that he gets credit for and do not distinguish between positive and negative accomplishments

Improved the Freedom of Information Act and issued new guidelines to make FOIA more open and transparent Provided the first voluntary disclosure of the White House Visitors Log in history GM was in such good financial shape, they gave a share of the profit to each worker, with checks up to $11,000 Worked with Apple Computer to get them to build more product here As of August 2016, there have been 78 consecutive months of private sector job growth Oversaw a reduction in the federal budget deficit by two-thirds since taking office Scolds Congress Blocked a monopolistic merger of Staples and Office Depot, to preserve at least some competition Stock market has reached record highs, restoring most of the economic losses felt during the Bush Recession Set up rules for banks in handling legal marijuana money Blocks the merger of several health insurers to ensure that competition remains in the health insurance business Gave up some executive power, promising to create adversarial process in FISA regarding NSA surveillance Limited local police acquisitions of military-style equipment, to reduce the likelihood of overkill.

Blocked a monopolistic merger of Staples and Office Depot, to preserve at least some competition

That’s total bullshit. Prevented a monopoly of office supplies retailers? More like prevented property owners from exercising their property rights. They were never going to be a monopoly, it’s fucking retail, not commodity production.

Stock market has reached record highs, restoring most of the economic losses felt during the Bush

Not a sign of a healthy economy. It’s a sign that tax, welfare and regulatory incentives are artificially herding money into the stock market, making it more volatile and less predictable.

Set up rules for banks in handling legal marijuana money

While simultaneously cracking down on producers and retailers that are in compliance with state law.

Blocks the merger of several health insurers to ensure that competition remains in the health insurance business

It’s already a cartel system. Moreover, I doubt that the feds know more about the economic sense of a merger than the property owners themselves do.

Gave up some executive power, promising to create adversarial process in FISA regarding NSA surveillance

Executive power has never been more robust and wide in scope. And promises mean precisely nothing.

Other than that, though, Obama has been a dismal failure. In a couple of centuries, history may find that he was worse than Bush. But for the rest of our lifetimes the court intellectuals, historians, and media will celebrate his joyous reign, and put all blame for the dismal present situation and all future disasters on his predecessor and his successor.

He didn’t bomb Iran CATO. He just gave them a few hundred billion dollars in cash. I am not seeing how that is any better. And we are now closer to having a nuclear holocaust with Russia than we have ever been. And he also assassinated two American citizens, something even McCain would not have done or gotten away with if had.

But whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the night I guess.

80 people including corrections officers, inmates and “outside facilitators” have been charged with orchestrating a vast contraband smuggling enterprise that traded drugs, tobacco and cellphones to prisoners for money and sex.”

Market failure or free market FTW? Either way, the government should just make a law making this sort of thing illegal and that’ll put an end to it.

Hey feminist friends, male harassment in public space ever get you down? Cause it’s sure as hell been getting me down lately.

These days I feel like everywhere I turn, there’s another douchebag with googly eyes making me contemplate militant lesbian separatism.

Enter some interesting new work by Durham University feminist scholar Fiona Vera-Gray, who has done a too-real study of what most women who have ever ventured into public space know to be true ? that we spend a shit load of time adjusting our behavior out of fear of male harassment. From the classic “quick-walk-with-your-head-down” to the contemporary “checking your phone and putting your headphones on,” women are constantly adjusting our behavior due to a near-constant feeling of anxiety in public space. This anticipation of danger, coupled with actual incidents of verbal harassment or even assault, conspire to restrict our freedom of mobility. And coupled with other systems, like racist violence and class oppression, these restrictions upon our right to public space can compound.

That’s why the burqa was invented. That’s why devout Muslim men forbid their women to go out in public. It’s just wonderful that the modern feminist movement is beginning to understand the precepts of Islamic practice.

Progressives are taking over an explicitly right wing institution. So much for them only taking over every other institution. Now they are taking over right wing ones as well.

You can’t overstate how disgusting this is. I can’t seem to recall CATO being so reasonable about other rights. Hey, lets be reasonable about warrantless searches or NSA spying or (gasp) sacred gay rights. Don’t seem them saying any of that.

They are all about being reasonable about gun rights. And are perfectly aware and happy knowing that this paper will be used by leftists to troll the hell out of those who do care about gun rights by pointing to it and saying “see even one of your own thinks you are nuts”. Thanks CATO.

Culture matters. People care about and are the most conservative about things they know and understand. I bet no one employed at CATO or reason owns a gun or comes from a family that has a tradition of gun ownership. They may have fired a gun a few times on safari out in the wilds of Falls Church observing the exotic culture at NRA headquarters but none of them do or would ever own one. So they just don’t care about the issue. It is just another thing to look reasonable and trade away for the issues they do care about, which of course always boil down to the things douche bag I 95 urbanites care about; access to cheap consumer goods, food trucks, uber, gays and sticking it to the evil Fundies.

CATO is mostly Chicago school acolytes, utilitarians for the most part, not actual advocates of liberty and free markets. People that are pro-liberty for utilitarian reasons as opposed to principled moral ones, are always going to be more susceptible to being seduced by the left.

The task, therefore, is to identify semi-automatic weapons that are not commonly used and not needed for lawful purposes. The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban went too far, but a more limited version might be viable.

I’m sure that “not needed for lawful purposes” part would be very contained.

Last I looked shooting shit out in the country for fun was a “lawful purpose”. So is having it in my basement to look at and talk about. Last I looked “because I like it” is perfectly lawful.

Someone needs to ask Levy, do people really need to be having ass sex? Isn’t oral sex and heavy petting enough? Last I looked ass sex is commonly not used for lawful purposes. Maybe we should ban that too.

What kind of tortured reasoning is Cato pushing here? The “Assault Weapons Ban” was largely targeted towards cosmetic features and was ultimately worthless as a result, which is primarily why it was allowed to expire. What “limited version” would be even less restrictive than silly cosmetic feature bans?

The “not commonly used and not needed for lawful purposes” is the ultimate in prog-weasel word argumentation and should basically end any notion of Cato being a libertarian organization. I don’t “need” my .357 Ruger or Mossberg, either, but that’s not the damn point. The point is that I have the right to exercise the means to defend myself and my family from harm. I’ve chosen to do that with the aforementioned firearms, but if someone decides they’d rather do it with a 5.56 AR-15, then they’re allowed to do so on purely moral grounds. Hell, if they want to do that with a tank, I don’t have a problem with that, either.

Once you go down the rabbit hole of saying a right is subject to “reasonable” restrictions or is only available where you “need” it, you are just negotiating the terms of the surrender. CATO of course knows this. They have seen what the Supreme Court has done to the 4th Amendment. They certainly understand the slippery slope that such justifications are for things like NSA spying and such. Yet, they embrace it here.

A tip from a prison guard has yielded the single largest federal case in Maryland’s history: 80 people including corrections officers, inmates and “outside facilitators” have been charged with orchestrating a vast contraband smuggling enterprise that traded drugs, tobacco and cellphones to prisoners for money and sex.

Hot little gal about 25 sleeping on the train in the seat across from me. Business suit, brief case and skirt that is riding up a bit. If I bend my neck about 5cm, I’ll get a nice view. But I don’t wanna perv. But I wanna see! Libertarian call on this?

One study does not necessarily mean conclusive proof, but that is entirely plausible and not surprising if it is true. It makes sense there could be second order effects to fucking with women’s hormones.

Whatever my wife used to use made her a raging bitch. Luckily when I proposed my theory to her, she recognized it to be true and stopped using it. Downside is, she doesn’t want to try a new pill and I am now responsible for making sure I do not get any unwanted children.

I know. That’s what makes the situation so funny. I’m not sure if he actually tried to do that or not, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Not sure where on the non-travel expenses that would go under on a voucher, although I guess he could make something up to try and get repaid.

The thing is, while non-business expenses will get flagged, you can generally avoid scrutiny as long as you pay off the bill as soon as you get back from the trip. Probably just the sheer cost of the bill is what set off the alarm bells; if it had been $100-200, I doubt anyone would have said anything.

One of the people involved in the Secret Service Columbian hooker scandal was some idiot son of a big donor who worked at the White House. He of course walked away unscathed as will this guy. Rules are for the little people.

AYFKM? You were in the military right? and had a GTC, right?? Like all govt travelers, he uses his card up front for lodging and meals, is then reimbursed a set amount. If he charges above that amount, he gets to make up the difference. Either way, he pays the card bill when it shows up. The “taxpayer” still only gave him lodging, per diem and minor (justified) expenses. Which businesses he used his card at is immaterial. Please explain who the victim was?

What the public doesn’t get is the government credit card is not government money. The individual pays the bill every month just like a regular credit card. If he was reimbursed a thousand bucks in per diem and lodging for the trip and he charged up two thousand at a strip joint, it’s totally on him. It may be improper due to policy, but it’s only so due to optics. These are the stupidest ‘govt waste’ stories out there…

default=separate issue. IIRC correctly, the terms are pretty much set by contract so unless you literally don’t qualify as an individual, you’re getting a card because it’s mandatory. And since you’re required to pay it off each month, the APR terms are meaningless.

In the current presidential contest, we could not have a more stark choice before us, between a candidate who rejects the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening and a candidate who embraces the role of a price on carbon and incentives for renewable energy.

If you care about the planet, the choice would seem clear.

If the appropriate catch-phrase for the 1992 election was “It’s The Economy Stupid!,” then this time around it ought to be “It’s the PLANET stupid!.”

Britain cannot be allowed access to the EU’s single market without accepting free movement of people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday, warning she would not allow a free-for-all.

“If we don’t say full access to the internal market is linked to full freedom of movement, then a movement will spread in Europe where everyone just does whatever they want,” the chancellor told business leaders from the BDI industry federation.

Since their desire to not be consumed by middle eastern immigrants was a primary motivating factor of getting out of the EU, I think Ms. Merkel’s proposal is a non-starter, in addition to the fact that it’s incredibly petty to make this a point of contention.

It also tends to give away Merkel’s true feelings: I thought refugees were, overall, a benefit to the destination country. If Britain says no to free movement, wouldn’t the consistent response be something along the lines of “well, we gave you a chance but if you don’t want the pluses that come from refugees, so be it.”

In her youth, she was a rising star in the East German communist party. And certainly her holding the line on preventing the ECB from inflating the Euro to shrink the Greek debt showed she is willing to do what’s best for Germans even if the rest of the world is shrieking how horrible and fascistic* they are.

I can’t figure her out. This degree of commitment isn’t emotional. It’s very purposeful and makes no sense to me.

* Naturally they are using the definition of fascist where fascist = won’t give me what I want.

She is easy to figure out. She is the daughter of a German minister. She is the classic upper class guilty protestant. She sees taking the refugees as a way for Germans to atone for their historic sin. A way for Germany to shed its past and prove to itself and the world what a tolerant and receptive society it is.

So Zeb do you just think no ones motives can ever be discerned? When I say “hey look at this person’s past and other things they have done, you can see why they are likely doing this” and you say “so you can read minds”, it makes you look unbelievably stupid and dense.

I know you think it is clever but it is really not. It is makes you look like a dolt. Feel free to keep doing it. I find it mildly annoying and distracting but it makes you look a lot worse than it does me.

I liked the flick. Yeah, it had a slow spot in it, but it ended well (and brutally). And the tank-on-tank action was, as far as I know, dead accurate.

My biggest knock on it was they couldn’t resist the tired, tired trope of “regular guy gets in with a bunch of hardened warriors, can’t handle it but then becomes a warrior and the sole survivor”. Yawn.

Don’t forget their use of an actual Tiger for the tank battle scene. that was pretty cool.

The stupidest part of the movie is at the end–I’m really supposed to believe an entire German regiment wouldn’t be stocked with a few panzerfausts to take out a lone Sherman, and attack it in the stupidest way by running right down the road instead of flanking it? Not to mention a movie that continually emphasizes how evil the Nazis were shows a German soldier letting the lone surviving crew member live instead of shooting him in the face.

Man for man, the Germans were probably the best soldiers in WWII. However, since at least the days of “Combat,” they’ve been made to look foolish. A Nazi will run out of the building and stand on the front step while Little John hoses him down with his B.A.R. Lucas must have patterned his storm troopers after these guys who couldn’t hit the side of a barn from 20 feet away with a Schmeisser.

I don’t think there’s any dispute about it. The held control of nearly all of Europe and most of North Africa almost single-handedly for about 4 years. The Italians were straight-up worthless as fighters and would have been rolled in just a few weeks if they hadn’t been augmented by German soldiers. If Hitler hadn’t been stupid enough to 1) prevent Rommel from annihilating the British at Dunkirk; 2) avoided Operation Sea Lion and just kept the British blockaded, 3) not invaded Russia, or at least occupied the southern Ukraine and Crimea while leaving Leningrad and Stalingrad alone, and 4) not pre-emptively declared war on the US after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the rest of the 20th Century in Europe would have looked VERY different.

Two of the more striking things about Clinton’s campaign is that if you didn’t know any better listening to her you would think George Bush served a third and fourth term the last eight years and how much she sounds like Trump. Hillary is all about sticking it to the foreigners and saving American jobs. Who knew?

CA decides that if prosecutors break the law, maybe they should be punished.

“Harsher penalties for prosecutors in state who withhold evidence” […] “Until now, prosecutors who have broken the rules in California have rarely been punished. But on Saturday, the bar’s board of trustees approved new ethical standards that would impose disciplinary action, and possibly disbarment, on prosecuting attorneys who failed to disclose evidence that they knew, or reasonably should have known, would assist the defense. A day earlier, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that will make it a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison, for a prosecutor to intentionally withhold evidence that would have made a difference in the case.”http://www.sfgate.com/news/art…..798180.php

Moonbeam isn’t quite up to the accuracy of a broken clock, but we’ll take what we can get.